Salafists fail to stop ‘Harlem Shake’ in Tunisia

These music videos that the Tunisians are posting are a genuine act of defiance and courage against a rapidly forming totalitarian regime. These kids, like most of the Egyptian protesters, are likely ‘cultural Muslims’ and not political or desirous of sharia. These are the ones we should be supporting.

Salafist Muslims tried to prevent the filming of current Internet craze the “Harlem Shake” at a Tunis school on Wednesday, but were driven off after coming to blows with students, an AFP correspondent said.

When the dozen or so ultra-conservative Muslims, some of them women in veils, showed up at the Bourguiba Language Institute in the El Khadra neighbourhood, a Salafist bastion, students shouted “Get out, get out!”

One of the Salafists, wearing military gear and carrying a Molotov cocktail he never used, shouted “Our brothers in Palestine are being killed by Israelis, and you are dancing.”

The Islamists eventually withdrew, and the students were able to film their production.

On Monday, Education Minister Abdellatif Abid said a probe had been ordered into a staging two days earlier of a “Harlem Shake” by students in a Tunis suburb.